Motivational Quotes

Criticism

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

- Nunn, Gregory

Best Quotes about Criticism

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Kael, Pauline

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

Williams, Bern

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Johnson, Samuel

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Auden, W. H.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

Honest criticism is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Jones, Franklin P.

10.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

11.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

12.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

13.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

14.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

15.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

16.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

17.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

18.

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

19.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

20.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

23.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

24.

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

25.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

26.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

27.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

28.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

29.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

30.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

31.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

32.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

33.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

34.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

35.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

37.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

38.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

39.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

40.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

41.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Picasso, Pablo

42.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

43.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

44.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

45.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

46.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.